


Credo

by Enisy



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Destroy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23017012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enisy/pseuds/Enisy
Summary: The Illusive Man is back, and he’s going into politics. (Shepard’s just going through the motions.)
Relationships: Illusive Man | Jack Harper/Female Shepard
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Spectre Requisitions 2020





	Credo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AinZaphir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/gifts).



> Beta-read by the incredible [Duinemerwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duinemerwen/works).

She thinks she saw a ghost: spectre meeting Spectre.

At the Silver Coast Casino, next to the quasar terminals, he’d been glad-handing some stiff, besuited woman, talking shop about the Sirta Foundation’s biometric authentication upgrades, and even without the steel-blue irises she would have recognized him. He inclined his head towards her, acknowledging her regard, but by the time she’d made her way through the gamblers and the croupiers, he was gone.

“The Illusive Man?” Liara quirks an eyebrow when Shepard brings her the news. “No, I haven’t heard anything, Shepard. Let me see… I can put out more feelers in the Citadel. My main contact there has been running dry for a while. At least now I’ll have a direction to point her in.” She flicks her gaze to the floor. “What you say is very worrying, if true.”

“ _If true_? What, do you think I’d lie about something like this?”

“Of course not. Never.” Shepard longs for the hero worship of old; Liara’s pity is unbearable. “But you were injured terribly during that explosion, and you’re still recovering – you saw Captain Anderson around every corner for months, do you remember?”

“I saw Anderson because I _wanted_ to see Anderson,” Shepard snaps. “I can assure you I have zero desire, _zilch_ , to see the Illusive Man.”

She is vindicated when, a month later, she spots his photo in her newsfeed on the way to a press conference. He’s going by “Timothy Dover” instead of Jack Harper, as she knows he was once called; and he is stumping for the Terra Firma party.

Shepard wants to wave the datapad in Liara’s face and crow “Who was right? Who’s _always_ right?” But she appeals to the better angels of her nature.

Seeing is believing, and she _will_ see him again.

Calls are made; locations are exchanged. Shepard still has trouble maintaining her balance as she makes her way to Apollo’s Cafe. Her footsteps are too loud (skeletal lattice), and her movements too supple (microfiber weave). Her skin feels like several layers of spray paint.

Coming back from the dead once made Shepard wish for a therapist. The second time makes her wish for a chiropractor. Perhaps her entire crusade against the Reapers – the Battle for Rannoch, the friendship with Legion and EDI, the destruction of the Catalyst – all of it has been a mental exercise to prepare her for this. For feeling like a machine. Like software in an empty spaceship, where even the echo of the previous captain is fading, and the stars leave permanent smudges on the windows.

“You changed your hair,” says the Illusive Man when she arrives and takes a seat across from him. His tone is one of accusation. “I liked the bob cut better. It made you look strong.”

Shepard tugs at a red lock, as if she’s only now become aware of its existence. “I didn’t know that xenophobic madmen could have opinions on the coifs of _This One’s Hairdressing Salon_ ,” she says. “Do you have more lifestyle advice? You could start a podcast.”

He doesn’t laugh – he never does, just shifts his position, crossing right ankle over left knee. The Citadel has only recently begun to stir with its old life, one sign of which is the Petrovskys’ bickering, now punctuated by a toddler’s shrill whimpers. The air is sweet and refreshing. Shepard observes a dash of silver in the lake (who would have thought – there are fish in there, after all).

“So, what’s your deal?” she asks, playing it cool. “Are you a clone?”

“No,” the Illusive Man says.

“Really? If you bothered to keep Shepard spares in the vat, you must have a reserve of Harpers, too.”

“I _did_ ,” he replies. With slow, deliberate movements, like a magician assuring the audience there is no secret compartment, he pulls out his trademark cigarette and takes a drag. “But I’m the real deal. Same as you, Shepard. A Cerberus cell recovered me while the Alliance was busy repairing AIs and triaging aliens.” His mouth twists. “They never did get their priorities straight.”

Shepard crosses her legs, too, and it’s like looking in a mirror. “I saw you die,” she says, although of course that’s never stopped him before.

“That’s never stopped _you_ before,” replies the Illusive Man.

And he smiles. For the first time, it touches his eyes, newly brown, twinkling, amiable, and Shepard is in awe that death can _give_ something, too, instead of just taking, taking, taking.

The Illusive Man orders blended scotch, even though it’s the middle of the day; Shepard sticks with coffee. When their thirst is slaked and they are set to leave, he suggests that they might meet again, and she doesn’t object.

“You should join the party,” he tells her many days later, at the Strip, leaning against a chrome shuttle and watching the artificial sun splinter and drop.

“Clearly, Jack, you’ve never seen me dance, or you would know I _am_ the party.”

She’s taken to calling him Jack when she wants to rile him up.

“Don’t be facetious, Shepard. I expect better of you.” The Illusive Man tamps out the ashes from his cigarette. They burrow in the darkening sky like tiny, red-eyed rabbits. “You’re the best humanity has to offer. Terra Firma will never reach its full potential without you.”

“Here’s something that may not have occurred to you: I don’t _want_ Terra Firma to reach its full potential.” She whirls at him, eyes flashing. “The only reason you and I are standing here today is because alien races from all ends of the galaxy came together to combat the Reapers. How can you feel comfortable peddling Terra Firma’s isolationist bunk, knowing that?” She shakes her head. “I keep thinking you’ll learn your lesson, but you never do.”

“You forget, Shepard – those aliens whose friendship you so prize,” he jabs at his chest, “ _I_ led you to them. It was _my_ dossier that gave you Vakarian, Solus, Krios, Samara, Tali’Zorah and the lab-grown Krogan. I see the value of working with other species for a common cause. I just don’t think there will always _be_ a common cause. And I don’t believe in mindless altruism.”

She scoffs. “And you’re saying _I_ do?”

“You used to.” The Illusive Man is not looking at her anymore, which gives her free license to examine him: away from his chair, away from his pad, away from his bright blazing backdrop, he looks like just another fat cat on a night out. An aircar zooms over their heads, cutting out the first part of his sentence. “— altercations when I first took you under my wing, because you were too naïve, too trusting. If you didn’t believe in altruism, you certainly didn’t rule it out.”

Shepard crosses her arms, prompts him: “And now…”

“Now you don’t believe in anything.”

His raspy voice slams down on her like a guillotine. And the worst part is, Shepard cannot protest: because they are both zombies, or clones, or one of each – him and her – but he seems to have reconciled himself with his metabolism, his misplaced moles, his pink, baby-fresh skin, and she’s the only one swimming in her own biology, rudderless. Drowning in her stomach acid.

Finally, at his repeated urgings, and after hearing that Kenneth and Gabby will be there, Shepard attends a Terra Firma fundraiser. The party is known to attract the more racist, xenophobic elements of humanity, but they are nowhere in sight at this event, which is peopled by economists, historians and sundry intellectuals.

“The turians hold too many cards,” says a middle-aged woman with a figure-hugging dress, but without the figure to justify it. “Primarch Victus owes a debt to you, Commander. But as you know, he is no diplomat, and he is trailing strings that others won’t hesitate to pull. Even as I speak to you now, the Hierarchy is making motions to install a second turian in the Council. And who can say no to them? Their military is the only one that came out of the Reaper War relatively intact…”

Belief. The Illusive Man is right. They have it in spades, and she’s lost it, somewhere between the coup on Tuchanka, the year-long physiotherapy, the unexpected tryst of her alien friends (Garrus and Tali, oh, that one still hurts), and the Council relegating her to figurehead, there to gulp down their bitter facts and regurgitate sweeter, spicier lies.

“I give it no more than a year before Wreav demands new planets for his brood. And God help us all if he doesn’t get them…”

Belief.

They make some good points.

One summit, one Armistice Day protest, and two more fundraisers later, Charles Saracino’s spiel doesn’t sound so delusional anymore. Even when he accidentally refers to the asari as “sex aliens.” Even when he caps everything off with, “The parliamentary elections are just around the corner. How would you like to run for one of the spacer seats, Commander?”

Before the war, Shepard would never even have considered it. But a lot has changed. She’s so sick of doing interviews with al-Jilani, so sick of signing autographs. Terra Firma has a lot of clout with the Alliance. She could do some good if she positioned herself strategically within it. She could steer it in a better, more moderate direction.

The Illusive Man is standing next to her, and he places his hand on the small of her back as soon as the suggestion manifests, purring “She’d be perfect” – affirming it in the shell of her ear: “You are _perfect_.”

She pants and sweats to perform a single pull-up in her physiotherapy routine. Her arms tremble as she hangs from the bar, and she recalls the Illusive Man’s words from long ago.

“You are a valuable asset to all of humanity.”

“I’ve never seen a better leader.”

“Unique.”

“Our best hope.”

“You’re more than a soldier – you’re a symbol.”

He has gone and gotten himself rebuilt, but years before that, he rebuilt _her_ – every cell, every neuron. And so…

“I wouldn’t have sent you in if I didn’t think you would succeed.”

And so, wouldn’t he know?

Shepard lets go of the bar, landing on her feet with a decisive thud.

  
The Illusive Man gets his old implant back: ice-blue, opaque, coruscating eyes. Just in time for the broadcast of Commander Shepard’s blow-out victory at Terra Firma’s election-day gala, so that she is at pains to read his face. But his hand travels up her thigh, while her colleagues cheer and clap and chant the party’s lyrical, ancient, Latin name.

Is he using her, or is she using him? It wasn’t clear to Shepard the Soldier, and it’s not clear to Shepard the Politician.

The microphone at the podium blares with feedback when she opens her speech. She fumbles through the opening jokes. The crowd laughs anyway, and the Illusive Man watches her like a statue the whole time. She still hasn’t figured him out. But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter - because there is firm ground beneath her feet again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [enisywrites](https://enisywrites.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. Come on over if you want to drop me a prompt or a question, or to just say hi!


End file.
